


Good Enough to Eat

by mundanecactus



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Revenge, Will Graham Gets His Shit Together, glow up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29526696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mundanecactus/pseuds/mundanecactus
Summary: He had spent months sharing his head with Garrett Jacob Hobbs. He had also forgotten Mrs. Hobbs’ first name.Will's failed attempt to kill Hannibal from prison is a wake-up call, and a second chance. Oh, he'll get revenge alright, but he's had time to reevaluate and restabilize, and when he takes Hannibal down, he's not going with him.AU where Will gets the upper hand and doesn't have to be evil. Call me boring, but seeing a smug bastard cannibal therapist get his comeuppance is something that can be so personal, actually.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 12
Kudos: 45





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I never finished the show b/c I got tired of Will Graham simping, so take my opinions with a grain of salt <3

He’s relieved to have his glasses back. They wouldn’t give them to him until now; probably afraid that he’d break the lenses and slit his wrists with the shards. It wouldn’t have mattered. Will found about six different ways to kill himself in that cell on the first day, but he wasn’t going to do it. Being in prison, he’d found, was a little like dying anyway. Like being a ghost. Everyone talked about you in the past tense, and you had a lot of unfinished business.

But haunting isn’t necessarily the right way to go about dealing with these things.

He’d come to his senses after his little scheme had failed, the orderly dead and Hannibal coming to see him with his cuffs pulled low over bandages. At that point, there had been no hope; it had been a parting shot, the trigger pulled without fear of consequences. But it hadn’t worked, and anyway, Will had spent long enough alone at this point that he was very nearly detoxed from the field. Withdrawals, of course—nightmares that left him shuddering and sobbing. But there was one very important realization that Will had come to, bereft of anyone to empathize with. There was a reason he hunted killers instead of joining their ranks. You can’t empathize with people without caring about them. And for every killer, there is at least one victim, who deserves that same amount of care.

He had spent months sharing his head with Garrett Jacob Hobbs. He had also forgotten Mrs. Hobbs’ first name.

So after Hannibal cheated death and came to give Will that disappointed look—heinous, hypocritical bastard—Will had requested the files of the cases he’d worked on, and forced himself to learn everything about every one of the victims. He’d stood in their killers’ places before; now he stood as the victims, getting shot and slit and stabbed and bleeding out over and over again. It hurt, like a baptism in acid, but he came up clean. He knew who he was. He wasn’t Garrett Jacob Hobbs; he wasn’t Hannibal. He was Will Graham; he was something of a victim; he had come very close to becoming a monster.

But he wasn’t a monster yet; he was a monster hunter, and he had to reveal the monster before he put the silver bullet through its heart.

He takes back his glasses and his clothes—someone’s cleaned them, but there’s still a hole in the shoulder of his shirt where Jack shot him. He manages a bit of a smile, and runs his finger around the frayed edge. He liked this shirt; maybe he’ll patch it, and wear it like an accusation to the office. But not right away—no, that will come later. Flannel and comfort, the oversized garments he’s always used as a shield will have to be packed away for the time being. Will is a fisherman, but fish like flashy bait.

He wears the clothes back out, but the mask he wears is not his own. And there’s a relief to know that, for certain.

Chilton stands by the door as he leaves, watching him. His look says something about expecting him back, whether or not he’s been exonerated of his crimes. “Don’t forget our arrangement,” is all he says, that perpetual sneer in his tone. “You’ve still got some tests to sit for, patient of mine or not.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Will assures him with equal sarcasm. That’s part of the plan; play up the charming, smirking, butter-won’t-melt psychopath that Chilton expects. It’ll get back to Hannibal; he may or may not believe Will’s change, but with any luck trying to figure it out will distract him. He’s already cozied up to Gideon; he begged the guards to tell him about the nurse Gideon mutilated before he did it. It’s taken the collapse of his life for Will to understand himself and his mind, but their descriptions—brave, funny, wry, left behind a steady girlfriend and a dog—give him what he needs to feel Gideon dig his eyeballs out of their sockets and impale him thirty times over. Any time he feels himself start to slide, he repeats their names. Elizabeth Shell. Louise Hobbs. Miriam Lass.

He can do this. He’ll wear the mask of a killer, and behind it, hold the people he couldn’t protect close. And if all goes well, Will will bait the Chesapeake Ripper out, and make sure that he himself is his last victim.

***

Resolute or not, Will’s skin crawls at the prospect of wearing not just the mask of a killer, but a mask in the image of Hannibal. It’s not enough to pretend to snap on his own; he has to get Hannibal interested, to make Hannibal see him as a protege, and there’s some old cliche about imitation and flattery that he can’t quite remember as he pokes uncomfortably around the tailor’s showroom. Sure, he spent most of their relationship getting gaslit and having his brain ravaged by false diagnoses and very real illness, but Will would probably have to be missing his brain entirely to not have seen signs. It would have felt like a compliment, and perhaps he might even have thought about unprofessional doctor-patient relations if he didn’t draw the line for potential romantic partners at murder. You don’t much want someone’s tongue down your throat when it’s been preceded by the ear of someone they murdered.

He swallows back bile, and tries to focus on the mundanity of shopping. Not all of life is grandstanding about mortality and God and bullshit; he’ll have to remember that when he goes back to face Hannibal. Walking the dogs, fishing, cooking comfortably pescatarian meals. Little comforts. He rubs the fabric of a three-piece between his fingers, wondering if it’s not enough like him. He doesn’t want to oversell it.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“Yeah, I, uh—you got anything for sort of a, uh—I have this, this person, who I want to, sort of show I’m doing, uh, well…”

“Post-breakup glow-up?”

Will narrows his eyes, applying the best of his behavioral unit investigative training to trying to parse that sentence. “Yes,” he finally settles on. “Sort of, um, this—” he gestures to his trusty carhartt jacket and jeans— “but elegant.”

There is a long pause. “We like a challenge,” the clerk says at last. Her voice is strained.

***

Somehow, they manage it—the suit’s a warm grey, something he might actually wear if it weren’t cut so tight. He takes it home and dresses up in front of his bedroom mirror, scratching Winston’s ears for moral support. It feels bad to bring it willingly into his home, given the associations it’s soon to pick up. His house used to be a safe place. Which makes him think of Hannibal himself being here, planting evidence, carefully setting him up to take the fall, and Winston whines, because he’s digging his nails into his palm with fear and loathing and anger. He shakes himself, looks in the mirror again, bares his teeth in that smile his lawyer told him to practice before he went on the stand. It always came out a bit too scary in the mirror over the sink in his cell; now, the feral set of his jaw seems to work just right. The vest smooths the jut of his ribs (grown a touch too prominent after the neurosis about eating anyone else’s cooking set in). The jacket nips in at his waist and accentuates his shoulders; the pants do remarkable things for his ass. He takes off his glasses and rakes his hair back from his forehead. Yeah. This is bait that anyone would be a fool not to take.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will doesn't get to choose who he empathizes with, but he does get to choose who he reaches out to. This is the opposite of mlm/wlw solidarity.

“Hello, Will.”   
“May I come in?”  
“Do you intend to point a gun at me?”  
“Not... tonight.” Will tucks his hands into his pockets, pretending penitence, and hunches his shoulders. “I’d like… to resume my therapy.”

***

A few hours later and he’s shaking so badly he hardly knows how he drove home. He collapses against the door the instant he shuts it, sinks to a crouch as the dogs swarm around him and lick his face. Grounding, grounding—that’s what he needs, what they give. He strips and dresses again in sweats, swathes himself in blankets, desperately tries to keep from spilling a mug of tea. Perhaps he had overestimated himself. Perhaps it was too soon. He shuts his eyes and gives himself a good strong dose of what he imagines Beverly must have suffered. Ooh, that one more than any other is his fault. But the pain and the guilt steadies him, and he manages to force the whispers in his ears away. Hannibal is a potent force, even on a first meeting, and it’s no help that Hannibal’s had plenty of time to lay traps for him in his own mind. He can see them arrayed around him, pits full of blood and razor-sharp antlers, discussions of God and power and fate. “No,” he says aloud, and crawls back from the edge. His dogs, and fishing, and… not much else. Hannibal has seen to that. But it’s enough—it has to be. The mundane is an anchor, and it’s all that shackles him from running headlong into one of those pits.

***

He calls Jack. It’s awkward—despite all that’s made of his abnormal capacity for empathy, Will has never been good at feelings. Neither is Jack. They take a walk, go ice fishing. Will forces himself to engage, to converse. It’s not the stilted elegance of a talk at Hannibal’s, and that’s a good thing.

“How’s your wife?”

He gets more than he bargained for; he didn’t know. And just like that, Will finds himself in Jack’s shoes too. He sees the kind of stress Jack is under—Miriam’s arm and the Ripper’s mockery, Will’s apparent snap, Beverly’s death, and through it all, the slow loss of his wife. It nearly leaves him gasping for breath. He looks up at Jack, and he knows they both know it’s too cold to cry. It’s not like them to cry, and it certainly isn’t like them to do it in front of each other. They don’t, but they know. And it goes a long way.

Will gets rid of the shirt he got shot in. He understands why Jack did what he did. It’s not quite forgiveness, but it’s a step in the right direction. An excision of the scar, and a chance to heal for real.

***

Will realizes that was the calm before the storm before long. Gideon is taken from the asylum; he’s found in Chilton’s basement. Chilton comes to him—those tests don’t seem like they’re going to get done anytime soon. It’s still too early, still too raw, but he tries to help. He fails. They find Miriam; Chilton is removed from the equation, and Will finds himself alone again, no one else to believe him. He sees the pattern, but he’s not well enough to deal with it. He can’t do this alone, he’s certain; holding himself together is enough of a challenge.

And he’s not even sure he’s doing that when he dials the number on the flashy business card he found stuffed in his mailbox on his first day back. After all, this is the action of someone who’s wholly insane. But he did make a deal, and he knows that she’s the most likely one left to believe him. He just prays it won’t make things worse.

“Was wondering if you’d hold up your end of the bargain or if I’d have to come hunt you down, Mr. Graham. You’ll forgive me for not wanting to meet you anywhere near my home—or your little cabin in the woods, for that matter.”

“Freddie.” His voice sounds tired to his ears; he doesn’t have the energy to be witty. “I… I need your help. I need… well, I’d like you to trust me.”

“I bet you would.” The words are harsh, but her tone sounds almost surprised. “Is this about your little Chesapeake Ripper theory?”

“It’s not a theory, it’s—” he sighs. “Yeah, sure, yes. Is there somewhere we can talk, then, where you’d be comfortable? Where no one would listen?”

She gives him an address; it’s a gay bar in north Baltimore. “Ten pm. Dress for the occasion, Mr. Graham.” The line goes dead.

***

He wears jeans and an old college t-shirt, and Freddie audibly groans when she finds him sitting in the corner. She strides over in five inch heels like they’re nothing. “Social chameleon you are not, huh? Did they get that psychopath diagnosis wrong after all?”

He queues up a sneer, then forces it down. “I don’t want to fight. Please.”

She narrows her eyes, and boosts herself up into the hightop chair. It’s hot in here, full of life, and Will’s trying very hard not to get overstimulated. Human contact was metered out on a drip in the asylum, and it’s been a while since he’s been in a crowd. But he has to act normal to get Freddie to trust him. And he has to get her to trust him to complete his mission.

“Who said anything about fighting? This is how I greet all my friends.”

“I’m going to bet you have about as many friends as I do, then.”

She purses her lips. “Alright, pleasantries exchanged. Tell me why I’m here, Mr. Graham.”

“Will.”

“Will.” 

A tiny concession, but he takes it as encouragement. “Hannibal Lecter is the Chesapeake Ripper.”

Freddie nods and rolls her eyes, holding up a acrylic-nailed index finger. Her manicure isn’t symmetrical; the index and middle fingers on her right hand have short natural nails. He wonders if she chews them off like he’s gotten into the bad habit of doing. She gets up and comes back with two beers, and pushes one to him. “I just realized I can’t deal with your bullshit sober. Keep going.”

He fumes a little bit, but takes the beer and swishes it around his mouth. “The long and short of it is that I’m going to catch him, and I don’t want him to drag me down with him when I do.”

“That really makes me trust you, Will, hearing that.” 

“You don’t know!” He catches the anger out of his voice at the last second, knowing that if he does anything threatening at all she’ll walk. He has a flash of what it must be like to be someone like Freddie—small, physically unintimidating, female and reasonably attractive and under threat from near every possible avenue. How someone might grow a sharp tongue to wield the way the men around her might wield stature and size and societal power. He sees himself through her eyes, notes the busy venue and how easy it would be for her to scream and get herself safe, and he has to applaud her. She’s far better at defending herself than he will ever be. “You don’t know,” he repeats in a more measured tone, “what it’s like to have him tear you down and build you back up in his image. My brain was on fire, Freddie, and he killed the neurologist who knew. He wanted to destroy me so he could decide how to put the pieces back together, and he did. I’m trying, so… so hard to be myself, to be healthy and good and in my right mind, but every so often I’ll find something he left in there to poison me. I can’t take the chance that there’s something hidden in there that will undo me and let him get away.”

She drains half the beer. “You sound just like him.” A smile twitches at the corner of her mouth. “I never cared for all that faux-academic bullshit.”

He winces. “Sorry.”

“Oh, that wasn’t meant to insult you.” She drums the long nails on the tabletop. “It makes me believe you a little more, honestly. That someone fucked your therapy directly up.”

“Yeah,” is all he can say to that. He sips the beer again, closes his eyes against the bright lights of the club. “Fucking sucks.”

She clears her throat, and he opens his eyes to realize it’s been a minute or two. “So what’s your plan, then, if you’re such a goddamn Jenga tower?”

He swallows. “Well,” he says, and looks into his beer. God, it really is hot in here. He drinks the rest of it. “He has one weakness.”

“Armani suits and theremin music? Ooh, cut the strings on his harpsichord.” Freddie snickers into her drink.

“I think it’s actually that he wants to sleep with me.”

Freddie inhales half the beer up her nose and spits the rest of it directly at his face; he blinks a few times, and gets up to grab some napkins. She’s still spluttering when he gets back, but she accepts the napkin and mops at her face, digging a notebook out of some unknown pocket in her skintight clothes. “I Fucked the Goddamn Chesapeake Ripper,” she says, and for a moment Will is vaguely horrified before she scribbles it down. “Or something like that,” she murmurs, and looks up at him, her eyes shining. “Now that’s a headline.”

“I didn’t!” Will protests. “I said he wanted to!”

“And I’m sure that’s a very important distinction to you,” she says soothingly. “Was it a gay awakening, or are you still clinging to the shreds of fragile heterosexuality?”

“I mean, I’ve been bi this whole time,” he mutters, annoyed. Great—a win for the community.

She notes something down, and smiles at him beneficently. “Alright, Will Graham. I still don’t trust you, but you’ve given me something good enough that I’ll set that aside. Assuming you’re going to sell me the rights to this story, what do you need me to do?”

“I’m going fishing,” he says with a sigh. “I’m using myself as bait. But someone has to hold the pole.”

“Why not Jack Crawford?”

Will grits his teeth. “Because I have to have some shred of my pride left with him when this is all over. Because Jack wouldn’t know how the hell to help me with this if it bit him in the ass.” He gets up, brings back another round of beers, and Freddie’s eyes glimmer. “Because I’m going to seduce the goddamn Chesapeake Ripper.”


End file.
